Trying to capture that sweet spot in a new way

All half-a-dozen of you, if that! Thanks for any continued interest you may have, it helps – even if it’s purely farcical thinking on my part – for me to imagine that there really is one or two people bemusedly looking forward to seeing the finished game. I still think that the genre of home-brewed “Retro-Inspired but also brand-new” RPGs are still largely untapped and I hope that this will help fill the niche.

I’ve been re-prioritizing what’s needed to make the current version of OSH play-test ready for public consumption. Primarily this involves putting together (and integrating into the more comprehensive rules) a set of Quick-Start tools, essentially putting down on paper all the stuff I usually end up, er, pulling out of my ass when I’m running it.

First things first is the “Adventuring Goal” table, which I seem to have become utterly obsessed with lately. The players influence the adventure creation in two significant ways: coming up with individual goals loaded with hooks for the DM to work off of, and coming up with “rumors” that they’ve heard about the local sandbox that provides the DM with a pool of optional idea fodder.

Obviously I’m a huge fan of twisting and/or indulging in cliché and stereotype (and this game is very much meant to be embraced in that spirit) so the Adventuring Goals have to be both immediately familiar and yet charmingly rich in potential. As it stands I’ve separated them into both general useable-by-anyone categories as well as more class-specific ones. Players can pick and choose or simply roll randomly (“Oh, I’m after my father’s inherited sword, stolen from him by marauders and now used by an infamous bandit king”) and then DMs can take that and run with it.

As with everything the main struggle is finding that balance between keeping things as simple and accessible as possible while having a high degree of condensed inspiration. A flavor-rich game where hopefully the “flavor” is generic and adaptable without being too boring. We’ll see how I do.